Archive for the ‘William Crapo Durant’ tag

William C. Durant’s automotive ambitions did not end when he was forced out of General Motors (for the second time) in 1920. By 1921, the automotive entrepreneur was back with Durant Motors, a company that included such brands as Durant, Star, Eagle and Flint. This 1924 Flint E-55 touring for sale on Hemmings.com was a product of that venture, based on a Willys design and constructed in a Durant factory in Long Island City, New York. Sometimes called a “junior Locomobile,” Flint Model E automobiles delivered a surprising amount of performance from their 65hp inline-six engines, yet were priced below GM’s rival Buick brand. This example appears to be largely intact, but in need of both mechanical and cosmetic attention. As only 500 Flints were assembled in Long Island City before production moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey (and later, Flint, Michigan), this car represents a rare find for collectors of early American automotive history. From the seller’s description:

Has a Continental-built 65hp, 268.4-cu.in. L-head straight six engine. Wheelbase 120″ with original Gehrig Wooden wheels and spare. 4-Door, body is straight, black paint with red pin stripe (signs of aging). Has all the glass windows but (1) is cracked. Original dashboard and gauges. Canvas top in good condition. Runs but could use some service work. Has been stored outside and is getting weathered.

While efforts to save a number of landmark automotive factories – the Packard plant in Detroit, the Ford factory in Highland Park, and the massive Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti – have received quite a bit of press over the last year, another factory far removed from southeast Michigan came down earlier this fall in New Jersey, almost unnoticed despite its role in the conception of Walter P. Chrysler’s first car.

The extensive 2 million-square-foot factory along Elizabeth, New Jersey’s, Newark Avenue played host to plenty of pioneers and titans of the automotive industry – Chrysler, the Duesenberg brothers, John North Willys, and William Crapo Durant among them – but arguably the most important three men to have passed over the factory’s threshold aren’t quite as well known. Fred Zeder, Owen Skelton, and Carl Breer. The three engineers had worked for Studebaker in the mid-Teens, then left all at once in about 1918 to join Willys, who had just bought the sprawling Elizabeth factory that the Duesenberg brothers built in 1916 to produce aero engines for use in World War I.

Willys tasked the three with developing a new advanced six-cylinder-powered car to complement his Overland and Willys-Knight, but then lost control of the company that bore his name in 1919, before the so-called Willys Six went into production. When Chrysler came in to manage Willys-Overland, the Willys Six prototype caught his eye, as did the talents of the three engineers, but Chrysler wouldn’t be able to act on his goal of starting his own automobile company just yet. Instead – and here’s where it gets complicated – in about 1921 Willys regained control of his company, Chrysler went to manage Maxwell in late 1921, and in June 1922 Durant bought the Elizabeth factory and the Willys Six prototype from Willys at auction, outbidding Chrysler.

Sources differ as to just how much of the Willys Six prototype Durant incorporated into his new Flint, which went into production in 1923. Some say the Flint hardly resembled the Willys Six, while others claim that the Flint was merely a somewhat bigger and rebodied Willys Six. Whatever the case may be, Chrysler swooped in to hire Zeder, Skelton, and Breer, then gave them the leeway to design a replacement for the Maxwell, essentially a development of the original Willys Six design. When that car – a medium-priced job with a high-compression six-cylinder and four-wheel hydraulic brakes – debuted in January 1924, however, it wore neither a Willys nor a Maxwell name; instead, it bore Chrysler’s.

Meanwhile, Durant incorporated the Elizabeth plant into his second automotive empire, using it to produce the Star, Durant Four, and Flint. While initially successful, Durant’s fortunes began to falter by the late 1920s. Flint production came to an end after 1927, Star production halted the next year, and the Durant held on until 1932. Durant sold the Elizabeth factory in 1933.

Afterward, the factory never again produced automobiles. Instead, it was used as a supermarket and later as a biscuit factory before serving as warehouse space for a number of companies when a massive eight-alarm fire engulfed it just before Christmas 2011. “Elizabeth fire officials say the blaze has so badly compromised the structure that interior sections of the building have begun to collapse under the heat, forcing firefighters to work to contain it exclusively from the outside,” NJtoday.net reported at the time.

While demolition crews were reportedly called in shortly after the fire, Hemmings reader Ray Homiski reported that the remains of the factory were finally razed in September, thus erasing another landmark of automotive history.

The William C. Durant statue, revealed during Back to the Bricks in Flint, Michigan. Photo courtesy Steve Casner.

For the past nine years, the Back to the Bricks car show has drawn car fans to Flint, Michigan, for five days of swap meets, car shows, parties and a “Rolling Cruise,” all for a noble cause: Back to the Bricks raises funding for statues honoring Flint residents who’ve made a significant contribution to the automotive industry. Past honorees memorialized in bronze include David Dunbar Buick and Louis Chevrolet, and this year the honor went to William Crapo Durant.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1861, Durant moved to Flint, Michigan, after dropping out of high school in his youth, before eventually dropping out of high school and working in the family’s lumberyard. At age 23, he partnered with Josiah Dallas Dort on a venture called the Coldwater Road Cart Company, which would eventually become the Durant-Dort Carriage Company. The horse-drawn carriage business grew steadily for the partners, and the firm soon expanded from national to global distribution, eventually becoming the world’s top manufacturer. In 1904, attracted by Durant’s success marketing carriages, Buick’s James Whiting hired him as general manager to do the same with its newly constructed automobiles.

With Charles Stewart Mott, Durant would go on to unite brands including Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Oakland under the General Motors banner. Forced out in 1910 by growing debt and a termination of his credit line decline in new vehicle sales, Durant would go on to start the Chevrolet Motor Car Company with Louis Chevrolet in 1911. His real intent behind this, however, was regaining control of General Motors, a goal ultimately achieved via the clandestine acquisition of General Motors stock. His time at the helm was short-lived, however, as within four years Durant was once again ousted from the company he’d founded.

Back to the Bricks festivities in Flint, Michigan. Photo courtesy Jason Watson.

Durant may be both revered and reviled by automotive historians, but his impact on the automotive industry and the history of Flint, Michigan, is indisputable. The Back to the Bricks-funded statue of Durant, created by sculptor Joe Rundell (who also crafted the statue of David Buick), resides between the statues of Louis Chevrolet and David Buick on Flint’s plaza and bears the following inscription at its base:

William “Billy” Durant led Flint’s incredible industrial development 1890s-1920s. Durant co-founded the successful Durant-Dort Carriage company, then in 1904 took control of David Buick’s fledgling automobile firm. Durant built on Buick’s success to create General Motors in 1908, making Flint the birthplace of what became the world’s largest industrial corporation.

After bankers seized control of GM in 1910, Durant created the Chevrolet car with ex-Buick racer Louis Chevrolet and remarkably regained control of General Motors in 1915-16. Durant brought in axle-maker C.S. Mott and AC Spark Plug founder Albert Champion and promoted Walter Chrysler to president of Buick.

This is actually the second statuary tribute to Durant in Flint, as the original resides outside the Dort-Durant Carriage Company building, across the street from the factory recently acquired by General Motors.

Per Al Hatch, founder of Back to the Bricks, planned future tribute statues of prominent Flint residents include Walter P. Chrysler (to be unveiled on September 9, 2014 2013) and Charles Nash, both of which are also being artfully rendered by Joe Rundell. The long term goal of the group, Hatch said, is to put Flint, Michigan, back on the map as a destination for those passionate about the history of the automobile. For more information, visit BacktotheBricks.org.

Amid all the reports of southeast Michigan automotive landmarks either facing the wrecking ball or similar uncertain futures comes news that General Motors has stepped in to buy a historic former automobile factory in Flint, Michigan; however, the factory never built a GM vehicle and is not suited for manufacturing use. So why is GM buying the old Durant-Dort Carriage Company factory?

As GM’s North America President Mark Reuss noted earlier this month when he announced the pending purchase of the 25,000-square-foot factory, located on Water Street on Flint’s waterfront and known as Factory One, he considers the location to be “the birthplace and ground zero of General Motors.” At the same time he disclosed that General Motors would provide funds for the upkeep and renovation of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company’s offices, a three-story building across the street from the factory currently owned by the city of Flint and occupied by the Genesee County Historical Society. GM spokesman Tom Wickham later clarified that the office building is actually where GM considers its inception to have taken place.

“That’s where the paperwork was signed,” Wickham said. “GM might have been incorporated elsewhere, but technically, we view the birthplace as being there in the Durant-Dort offices.”

Photo courtesy Michigan State Housing Development Authority.

Indeed, William C. Durant incorporated GM in September 1908 in New Jersey – a location chosen perhaps as much for privacy as for favorable incorporation laws – but the company didn’t simply materialize out of thin air. Durant, a Flint businessman, had already built a successful business out of the Flint Road Cart Company – later renamed the Durant-Dort Carriage Company – in partnership with Josiah Dallas Dort starting in 1886. Durant-Dort Carriage, spread over several factories in and around Flint, had in fact become so successful that Durant grew bored and looked for new challenges. In 1904, he found that challenge in the Buick Motor Company, which had recently moved from Detroit to Flint, but still hadn’t found much success. Durant turned it around almost overnight, with Buick production taking place initially on Kearsley Street and then later in a dedicated factory on Hamilton Avenue.

The success then set the stage for a consolidation of auto companies around Buick. Initial attempts to consolidate, led by Durant and Maxwell-Briscoe owner Benjamin Briscoe in meetings held in Detroit and New York City, fell apart. Briscoe, Henry Ford, and Ransom Olds all balked. But the talk of consolidation did inspire Durant to try again, this time using Buick and Lansing’s Oldsmobile as the nucleus, later adding Cadillac, Oakland, and a host of suppliers to the General Motors portfolio.

Dort, who provided plenty of behind-the-scenes help as Durant built Buick and General Motors, kept the carriage company going until around 1915, when he, too, switched to automobiles. Dort employees assembled the eponymously named cars, designed by Etienne Planche, in Factory One over the next nine years, until Dort went out of business and liquidated the company. According to GM sources, Factory One never again produced an automobile: Instead, it was used by a wholesale paper company, as a produce warehouse, as a furniture warehouse, by a watch repair company, and by a neon sign company over the next few decades. Following Factory One’s restoration in the mid-1980s, it has seen use as an antique mall and by Flint area social services providers. Its listing history on Loopnet show that Factory One has been placed on the market a number of times since 2001.

Photo courtesy Michigan State Housing Development Authority.

The Durant-Dort office building, meanwhile, served as the office and headquarters of both the Durant-Dort Carriage Company and the Dort Motor Car Company from when it was built in 1896 to the end of Dort production in 1925. Not only is Durant said to have laid the plans for GM in that building, but he also reportedly conceived of Chevrolet while there. Used by various civic organizations for half a century, the building fell into the hands of the city of Flint in 1977 and was restored by the Genesee County Historical Society over the next decade. Since then, the society has asked GM for help with heating and cooling the building (about $20,000 per year) and with repairs and maintenance to the building (another $20,000).

Wickham said that GM has pledged $50,000 for the office building. He didn’t release the selling price for Factory One because the purchase has yet to be finalized.

Both Reuss and Wickham said the plans for Factory One are still under development, but they said that it’s possible that it could be used to showcase some of the historic cars in GM’s collection. “We’ve got a lot of really beautiful, historic GMCs and Buicks in the company that don’t get shown a lot of justice,” Reuss said. “One of the thoughts is that we’d convert Factory One [to show the historic vehicles] and we could launch vehicles like the trucks that are made here in Flint. It could be really, really beautiful.” GM currently displays a portion of its collection in the 80,000-square-foot GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan, but keeps the remainder in storage.

There have been many celebrations of Chevrolet’s 100th anniversary this year, and along with them commemorations of its namesake, Louis Chevrolet, but we must remember the man who built America’s “deep running” brand, as well as General Motors itself: William Crapo Durant.

Born on December 8, 1861, Billy Durant was highly ambitious, and he got his start in the fledgling auto industry by purchasing Buick, and rolling this into GM with Cadillac, Oakland and Oldsmobile in 1908. He lost control of this corporation in 1911, the same year that he helped found Chevrolet – soon the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors.

After his second ousting from GM’s corner office in 1920, he formed the Durant Automobile Company, which encompassed the Durant, Star, Flint and Locomobile brands in a bid to echo GM’s hierarchy, but this firm was a casualty of the 1929 stock market crash.

Billy Durant’s personal crash was suffering a stroke in 1942; he died on March 18, 1947.

Let’s remember the 150th anniversary of the birth of the man who, through his drive and risk-taking, created the world’s largest and most loved automobile conglomeration. Cheers, Billy!

* Bell Vehicles said they were serious about entering production with their Bi-Car, a semi-enclosed sit-down motorcycle with retractable landing gear. Anybody know whether they actually did? (via)

* In the March 1930 issue of Modern Mechanics, Billy Durant, founder of GM, discussed his ideas for fortune-making. All well and good – he did build up GM twice, making considerable fortunes along the way – but maybe he ought to have focused more on how to not lose a fortune than on how to make a fortune?